Chaput says for Communion, divorced/remarried, cohabitors and homosexuals must live chastely

Chaput says for Communion, divorced/remarried, [cohabitors and homosexuals] must live chastely

Pope Francis exchanged the sign of peace with Archbishop Chaput during the closing Mass of the 2015 World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

[Until his friend Pope Francis applies his policy toward “ultraconservatives” such as Archbishop Chaput (“You remove a nail by applying pressure upwards. Or you tranquilize them, put them to the side, when they reach retirement age”) by appointing a new archbishop in the style of Chicago’s Cupich who says “Conscience Decides Who Can Receive Communion“?]

Crux Staff
July 5, 2016

According to a new set of pastoral guidelines for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia governing implementation of Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, people living together outside of marriage, and same-sex couples are eligible for Communion only if they “refrain from sexual intimacy” and that they cannot hold positions of responsibility in a parish or perform liturgical functions.

Just from this excerpt, it is very positive to see the prohibition of holding positions of responsibility. This presumably would include the role of sponsor at baptism/confirmation and also leadership offices in parish organizations (parish council, school commission, Holy Name Society, Altar & Rosary Society, etc.)
But with regard to reception of Holy Communion, there is also the aspect of scandal that must be considered. Even if cohabitating couples agree to live chastely (which is problematic itself for most normal man and woman couples), the presumption for the general public is that cohabiting couples are sexually active. This scandal touches so many different people: from young siblings and cousins to older acquaintances and casual observers.

This is just dung. Francis gives us dung. Moral laws don’t matter anymore. The Church is just like the US Government and every other banana republic. And it’s all going downhill because no one in power is willing to stand up for the truth.

And kids in the candy store should just look at the candy. Kleptomaniacs should try not to think about stealing. Perverts should avoid playgrounds. Drug addicts should take up vaping. There are all kinds of progressive modernist ways to work around these issues. Ultra-conservatives and reactionary neo-Pelagian triumphalists struggling with sinful rigidity should stop reading the catechism, Aquinas, or canon law manuals.

Archbishop Chaput’s guidelines invite a very specific question: Why did Pope Francis and the synods of bishops bother? You would not know it from what he writes that anything had changed in the Church since the ink dried on Familiaris Consortio, Pope John Paul II’s 1981 apostolic exhortation on family life. For example, you would not know that the synod fathers voted overwhelmingly last year to consider the possibility of the internal forum for those who are divorced and remarried civilly. Archbishop Chaput writes: “Because marriage is a public reality, and because a determination about the validity of a marriage affects the lives, the rights, and the duties of all parties touched by it, there must be a canonical process and a decision by the proper authority under canon law.” So much for the internal forum.

If you read Amoris Laetitia, you are aware that for Pope Francis, the Christian teaching about marriage is about so much more than sexual relations. His beautiful reflections on St. Paul’s hymn to love and his homely remembrances of the families he has encountered as a pastor both attest to this fact. Alas, in Philadelphia, it is all about the genitalia. Archbishop Chaput instructs those who are to accompany people in difficult situations:

“With divorced and civilly-remarried persons, Church teaching requires them to refrain from sexual intimacy. This applies even if they must (for the care of their children) continue to live under one roof.”

There is no sense here that the two people might love each other. There is nothing that speaks to the ways God sometimes enters through the smallest of openings to bring His love and mercy to the people of God. There is nothing except the rules. Archbishop Chaput should be awarded an honorary doctorate in deontology.

The archbishop gives a nod at the beginning of his guidelines to the key emphasis Pope Francis places on discernment in Amoris Laetitia, quoting from the text:

What we are speaking of is a process of accompaniment and discernment which “guides the faithful to an awareness of their situation before God. . . . [T]his discernment can never prescind from the Gospel demands of truth and charity as proposed by the Church” [Amoris Laetitia 300].

But, in the succeeding paragraphs he makes it clear that he knows the outcome of that discernment already. The idea that consciences could reach different conclusions because the situations in which the rules are applied are fundamentally different, is not raised as a possibility. The objective always trumps the subjective in this view of the world, although most of us have come to realize, and the best pastors have long known, that the truth resides in both the objective and the subjective, and if either is excluded, the other has overstepped its human bounds.

Indeed, Archbishop Chaput’s insistence on clinging almost exclusively to the objective is directly contradicted by Pope Francis in Amoris at #304:

It is reductive simply to consider whether or not an individual’s actions correspond to a general law or rule, because that is not enough to discern and ensure full fidelity to God in the concrete life of a human being.

How does Archbishop Chaput explain this contradiction? He insists that anyone in the irregular situation of being divorced and remarried be denied any leadership role, or really much active participation, in the life of their parish. “This is a hard teaching for many,” he acknowledges, “but anything less misleads people about the nature of the Eucharist and the Church.” Actually, his own Jansenistic reading of the moral life is what misleads people about the nature of the Eucharist and the Church. The failure to see that highlighting these particular situations and deeds over all others grossly misunderstands the challenges to faith in our time and in our Church.

Am I being too tough on Archbishop Chaput? He writes:

Even where, for the sake of their children, they live under one roof in chaste continence and have received absolution (so that they are free from personal sin), the unhappy fact remains that, objectively speaking, their public state and condition of life in the new relationship are contrary to Christ’s teaching against divorce. Concretely speaking, therefore, where pastors give Communion to divorced and remarried persons trying to live chastely, they should do so in a manner that will avoid giving scandal or implying that Christ’s teaching can be set aside.

Can I say that the concern about giving scandal has become so thorough here that the concern is itself a source of scandal. So intent are prelates like Archbishop Chaput in refusing to think there is anything really worth discussing here, they wish to shut down and foreclose the pope’s obvious invitation to discussion and adult decision making. They have the answers and anyone who questions them causes scandal. “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like other men….”

When Archbishop Chaput gets to the situation of gay and lesbian Catholics, he declines to even show the simple respect of referring to gays and lesbians as they refer to themselves, adopting the awkward, and rude, circumlocution “those who experience same sex attraction.” As Archbishop Blase Cupich pointed out recently, this avoidance of the words “gay” and “lesbian” comes 30 years after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called on all Catholics to treat gays and lesbians with respect. When such respect is seen to coincide with even the tiniest possibility that an opportunity to denounce homosexual relations as sinful will be missed, too many prelates follow Archbishop Chaput and decline the respect and seize the opportunity. I would note that Amoris, by contrast, refers to the passages in that 30-year old text that call for respect and declines to cite the passages that contained condemnation.

What does not seem to occur to Archbishop Chaput is that doctrine develops. Indeed, while he may try to wrap himself in the “timeless truths” of Pope John Paul II’s magisterium, others who were closer to John Paul II than the archbishop ever was, have seen how he, too, developed doctrine in this area and how Francis is simply moving along a path John Paul II began, albeit moving in a different direction from that desired by some who champion the late pontiff. Rocco Buttiglione, in this interview with La Stampa, made this point quite clearly.

Can I say that the concern about giving scandal has become so thorough here that the concern is itself a source of scandal.

Yes, you can. Can I say that your taking scandal is scandalous?

As Archbishop Blase Cupich pointed out recently, this avoidance of the words “gay” and “lesbian” comes 30 years after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called on all Catholics to treat gays and lesbians with respect.

John Allen, a veteran Vatican journalist, said he believed Philadelphia was among the first archdiocese to publish such rules based on its interpretation of Amoris Laetitia.

“My suspicion is that those who are inclined to a more progressive reading [of Amoris Laetitia] are not going to put out documents to say so. It will quietly be made clear to priests that it is OK under certain circumstances, for example, to allow some people to quietly come back to communion,” Allen said. “My suspicion is that the more traditional line [adopted by some bishops] will be more public.”

Allen said that he did not think Pope Francis would be surprised by Chaput’s reading of the papal document, since he is likely aware of traditional interpretations of his document.

AQ moderator Tom’s view:

While the Pope may not be surprised by the Archbishop’s guidelines, they will not help him get a red hat because of the limited number of red hats available for AmChurch but also for other possible candidates who are Frankenbishops not only by appointment but also in style – such as Chicago’s Cupich and San Diego’s McElroy.